As online discount sites such as Groupon, LivingSocial and Tippr compete in cities around the country, a new Seattle-area site called Yubit is jumping into the market. But Yubit is specifically avoiding that national battle by limiting its geographic scope and being highly selective about the businesses it features.

Developed by Microsoft veteran Ivan Joseph and his partners, the online coupon and local-business marketing venture is launching today with a promise to work exclusively with unique and independent Seattle-area shops -- the kinds of local "gems" that the site and its users feel comfortable recommending to friends.

"Every business has a story, and what we are trying to do is surface that story so that you can make a connection with that business that goes beyond normal advertising," Joseph said.

And Yubit itself is vowing to remain a local business, focusing exclusively on the Seattle region in the near term and planning to grow no further than the Pacific Northwest in the long run.

"There are 10,000 restaurants just in Seattle," explains Joseph, a former Bing product manager who left Microsoft amid its cutbacks last year. "There’s just a huge opportunity here that we don’t want to miss out on. There’s always this tendency or temptation to say, alright, six months here and now let’s go national. But we want to make sure that we stay true what we are doing, and we have fun with what we are doing."

Yubit will let users buy discount coupons to obtain products and services at local businesses, starting today with an offer from The Yellow Leaf Cupcake in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood. Purchased coupons can be printed out, or displayed on a mobile phone. Joseph says Yubit will use a pure performance-based model, making money through commissions on coupon sales, but not charging businesses up front to participate.

Yubit's Ivan Joseph (right) with business partners Cherian “Zach” Zachariah (center) and Shema Joseph. Marcus Donner/PSBJ

Based in Redmond, Yubit is operating under the umbrella of Miajo LLC. Joseph is partnering on the venture with Cherian “Zach” Zachariah, Yubit's chief technology officer. Joseph's wife, Shema Joseph, is also a partner. They are funding the business themselves, and Joseph says they don't plan to take venture capital.

In some ways, Yubit will resemble a hyperlocal community site -- publishing Q&As and other content to tell the stories of the businesses featured on the site.

That approach should help differentiate Yubit from competing sites, said Tim Wolfe of Peaks Frozen Custard, which is slated to be featured on Yubit along with an associated coupon. Normally, Peaks wouldn't take part in an online coupon site, preferring in-person events as a way of promoting the business, by giving people a taste of the custard. But he said he was swayed by Joseph's approach and attention to detail.

"We like this one because he’s focusing on unique businesses," Wolfe said. "It isn’t just anybody or anything. He really wants businesses to have a connection to the community and something different about them."

As a bonus, Peaks and other businesses that work with the site are able to reuse the photos taken for the Yubit features.

In deciding whether a business is worth approaching about participating in the site, Yubit will take into account a variety of factors, including the quality and quantity of online reviews about the business. Businesses will be categorized on the site as local gems, hidden gems or potential gems.

Yubit has also integrated social networking into the site, letting users maintain a "yuWish" list of businesses that they'd like to see featured on the site. Users will also be able to review businesses on the site and endorse their Yubit offers on their "yuLike" lists.

Yubit will take the wish lists into account -- along with its own criteria -- as it looks for new businesses to work with. Joseph says the idea is to create a virtuous cycle in which Yubit users help identify high-quality local businesses, benefit from coupons, and generate new attention and business for those shops in the process.